Attention teen dropouts racing to SF: The tech bubble is lying to you | Hacker News Reader

Attention teen dropouts racing to SF: The tech bubble is lying to you

blog.sfgate.com

7 pointszer00eyz15 comments

As a highschool dropout software-engineer (in eastern canada, but still) this just shows how... old this person is.

Tech is a huge field, it's not just web dev. If the web industry somehow collapses, I'll go do some industrial automation or just sell physical stuff my robots created.

You can say the tech bubble is lying, but I'll still be able to sell 3D printed kitch as long as there are hipsters and 3D printers.

>This is the tech bubble’s newest, most sinister message: Who needs college, really? Who needs exposure to a broad range of ideas, cultures, religions, literature, ways of being in the world exactly at the time you’re most open and impressionable to discovering them?

Spoken like someone who didn't grow up with access to the worlds largest library. I find it really hard to sympathize with someone who values "awkward teen sex" and college parties over building things.

I grew up ghetto adjacent, and although I'm sure it would have been great to go to party U calling it an essential experience comes off as incredibly privileged.

Fuck the sentiment that college own learning and even these essential experiences.

I agree college is for the privileged, but there is value in enjoying youth.

Or go to college, get a degree, take on oppressive debt by 22, move back in with your parents...

Many people manage quite handily to work their way through college.

Don't want debt? Be frugal and choose a different school.

In another time maybe, but not so much today.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/working-your-way-thro...

http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Study-shows-college-...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/02/10/millennials_l...

(Citing articles about rising costs isn't helpful.)

You can have many things in life, but sometimes you have to choose which are most important to you.

So, here are the choices:

1. Get your four-year degree in four years: Acquire a massive student loan debt.

2. Get your four-year degree in four years, CC and a 4-year: Acquire a less massive student loan debt.

3. Get a job, work your ass off, go to school a class or two at a time (year-round - no breaks), starting with cheap community college courses: Acquire a degree more slowly. Start a new career with much less debt and a wider range of possibilities, employment-wise. With lower fixed expenses, you gain the freedom to take chances on lower paying jobs that might be more rewarding personally, professionally, or which may have a low starting salary but huge potential for increases. If you're loaded with debt, those opportunities aren't possible because you've already priced yourself out of the market.

The route you choose is your decision.

The massive debt thing is over-hyped. Possible to do community college for no debt. Possible to get scholarships and work through school. I'm raising 3 boys, who will pay off what little debt they accrued in a couple of years after graduation.

So, choice three is good, but there are more choices that that.

Work their way through college, as in paying all their books and tuition without assistance? No they don't.

Tuition and books? Definitely can be done, but if you have to pay for room and board, and other things, then that's where it gets difficult. In some cases it can still be done though.

Edit: Especially with community college.

It isn't easy and it isn't fast. If your job supports you living on your own and you can start taking a class or two, that's how you start doing it.

>if you have to pay for room and board

As opposed to what, living on the street and eating rats? Room and board is a sunk cost regardless of whether you're going to school.

Some people live with their parents...who waive paying rent while their child is in college.

I think the chart in this one really explains the situation in a way no article could.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/the-myt...

Because that's the only alternative? "False equivalence" isn't a basis for a cogent argument.

Maybe Some of these boys making the journey have always been social outcasts and never really had a chance at a "normal" social life in college. Maybe getting patted on the head by that angel serves as some form of retribution and they are better off this way. Plenty of time to experience life when you are independently wealthy and only in your mid 20s. Sure as hell beats work slaving until retirement with nothing but your "eventful 20s" to reflect on if you ask me.

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